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James: TTC abandoned by city, province

The TTC is quickly becoming an orphan, abandoned by the city and province at precisely the time commuters need it most.

The backbone of the region’s transportation system, a spinal older cousin to the GO Transit network, is not in danger of collapse. Not yet. But the forces are so arrayed against it that contraction and retrenchment is a distinct possibility.

Few would argue against the idea that mobility is at or near the top of the list of critical issues facing the Toronto region. Yet, the type of advocacy needed to get commuters from Oshawa to Oakville and up to Barrie is absent.

On Friday, transit advocates talked to each other at a York University event called “Going to School: A Transit Summit.” They touched on all the important issues, but who is listening?

“A good city and a good region is worth paying for. We must have the courage to say, ‘I’m going to pay for it because we are worth it,’ ” said Sean Hertel, a planning consultant.

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The summiteers nodded in approval.

After all, just outside the summit walls, tunnel borers continue the march of the subway up to Jane St. and Highway 7, with two stops on the burgeoning York University campus, the country’s third largest university by population (66,000 and counting).

But it took incredible advocacy, provincial money, and the burning of political capital by former deputy premier and local MP Greg Sorbara to land the subway extension. And almost 30 years of talk before students and other commuters board the trains.

Where will that come from over the next decades?

City council is a divided mess. Whatever good ideas emerge are frequently buried in political animosity.

It’s reasonable to expect the Toronto mayor to be the biggest transit booster and TTC supporter. Not the current guy. In fact, the present administration works daily to undermine the effectiveness of the transit system.

The Toronto Transit Commission is either disparaged as wasteful, incompetent, or worse. City councillors, eager to balance the equation, make mistakes by pushing good ideas too quickly, without enough consultation. So we are deadlocked on the most important file in the most important forum.

Don’t look for advocacy up at 1900 Yonge St. With the TTC’s last chief general manager effectively fired by the current city administration for providing independent advice on the matter of subways versus LRT, one cannot expect the successors to be forthright or forthcoming with dissenting views.

Queen’s Park is supposed to provide a long view, rising above partisan politics. It set up Metrolinx to provide a regional lens and context to transportation planning but one wonders how nonpartisan the agency is.

Instead of pushing ahead with a funding strategy for the region’s transit needs, Metrolinx, primarily to ease political pressure on its political masters, has deferred the decision to next year and beyond.

As well, the latest move sees the province, through Metrolinx, decide to sideline the TTC and privatize the four LRT lines coming to Toronto over the next 20 years. Few can tell you how this experiment will evolve. There is little debate. The TTC staff has capitulated. City councillors seem to have given up the fight. We could wake up 20 years from now and find we have a Highway 407 situation — public asset given away to the private sector — and wonder how we got there.

Don’t expect the mayor to protest. He would destroy the TTC, if he could.

The last resort is usually the citizen.

But how muted they have become. And how conflicted.

Toronto Councillor Shelley Carroll, speaking at Friday’s summit, asked attendees where they are when citizens mass to object to increased densities along the city’s avenues.

“I eat density for dinner. At every meeting, densities are being fought . . . and there’s never anyone in the room in support. We are on our own in front of that crowd — the planner and the politician — and you are over here in this room.”

Bryan Tuckey, a former North York planner and now president of the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), sums up the public’s screwed-up mind on this matter.

“The only thing they hate more than sprawl is intensification,” he said.

But we want subways. Without tax dollars.

And, for now, we get fare hikes and service cuts and a diminished future.

Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca

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